


A Piece of History

by Tessalia_Grey



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Darksaber, Episode: s02e12 The Mandalore Plot, Episode: s03e15 Trials of the Darksaber, Episode: s03e16 Legacy of Mandalore, Mandalorians - Freeform, Star Wars Rebels: Heroes of Mandalore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessalia_Grey/pseuds/Tessalia_Grey
Summary: The thoughts of a very unusual Kyber crystal.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43





	A Piece of History

The caves are peaceful. Most of the time, anyway. Except when the Jedi bring a bunch of younglings here to find their Kyber crystal. Then it’s quite the ruckus. The crystals around me all buzz with excitement. Maybe it will be their turn to be plucked from this place and taken on adventures. And why not? After a few thousand years, I too find the caves serene, but boring.

Then again, I doubt I will ever be found by an overexcited little Jedi. I am not like the others. I am an oddity of nature. Singular and strange, and hence special, but, perhaps, in the greater scheme of things, useless.

The other crystals have beautiful colors. Blue is the most common. But there is also green and yellow. Few are even purple. But me? I am the only one that is black.

###

Something is different today. I cannot pinpoint what it is. There is yet another batch of younglings around, searching for their crystal. The others are excited again, of course. And while these events usually pass me by, I feel a strange sense of apprehension. Something is different than all the other countless times those young Jedi have invaded the caves.

I start to shake and, to my own surprise, to glow. I didn’t even know I _could_ glow. And I quite honestly don’t know what to do. And then, suddenly, there he is. A boy; not older than the others, but perhaps taller. Not so excited, yet maybe even more determined. I sense him clearer than I have ever sensed a living creature before.

Like me, this boy is unique. Singular, and though human, strange in the eyes of his peers. I come to know that he is Mandalorian, and that his name is Tarre Vizsla.

###

The case Tarre builds for me is, as both of us, unique. Rectangular, not cylindrical like all the others. In time, we accept our uniqueness. We wear it like armor. It makes us stronger. It makes us quicker than the others. Sometimes Tarre’s Mandalorian background shines through. He can be hotheaded, reckless even. But also brave and honorable. We spend many years in each other’s company. When we fight, we are one in the Force. The blade that springs from my casing, black as I am, an extension of Tarre himself.

###

Gone. Tarre is gone. One with the Cosmic Force now. As if that is any consolation to the ones left behind! I am left to mourn in silence. I want to burst; to end just like he did. To lose myself inside the never-ending river that is the Force. But I cannot. I want to shatter, but I am not allowed to.

Like so many others, I am placed on a shelf. I am one among thousand again. At least now, they are also as useless as I am.

###

They come in the middle of the night to take me away. I am in the hands of a Vizsla again. And I want nothing more than to go back to my shelf, safely stored away with the dust of decades covering me like a blanket. Though he shares his name and his heritage with Tarre, this man is nothing like him. He is brutal. To him, I am just a weapon. The inside of the casing he holds in his strong fingers is a mystery to him. And one that he doesn’t want to explore or understand.

Have I drawn blood before? Yes, of course I have. But always out of necessity, never like this man does. For glory, for lust, and for power.

Yet he and his descendants are successful at their task. They rule Mandalore now. And I have become a symbol of power, where I once was a symbol of justice. These men deal out their own justice, usually at the end of _my_ blade. I hope it will one day end.

###

Naturally, it doesn’t end. Their own home world is not enough for them. They wage war on the galaxy, almost managing to take it. But the Jedi stop them, barely in time. The devastation of this war is unimaginable. The suffering that rings through the Force is painful. And yet, I am still not allowed to burst and be done with it. I still must endure. I wonder what I did to deserve this punishment.

###

If I could sigh – not internally, but truly, like an organic creature – I would have sighed at my keepers’ actions many times over the last millennium. But maybe not as often as I would with Pre. It’s not that I cannot understand his position. After all, his predecessor almost managed to regain the rule over Mandalore. Only to be ousted by a young woman. A young woman who was so deeply troubled by the civil war that was raging around her and that now is adamant in her pacifism. I was close enough to her once to sense her. And the two men that were protecting her. Jedi. Jedi on Mandalore! The thought alone!

A few years ago, another young woman suddenly appeared here on Concordia. She, too, was deeply troubled. But not by the war, but by the peace that followed. And – at least in her mind – the price that peace was bought at: Mandalore’s heritage. She and Pre are often of a like mind. And in many ways, she is just as vicious and cruel as he is. And yet, her struggle is different form his. More personal. She does not only feel betrayed by a ruler. She feels betrayed by her own sister. And that leaves a gaping wound in her soul that I can sense in the Force whenever she is close. And she is always close to Pre these days.

Pre. The man has now allied himself with the Sith. The Sith for Force’s sake! Like you can trust these vile creatures! People may see my blade’s color and think of me as belonging to the darkness, but Force knows I am of the light. They can kill millions with me, but I will not stray!

###

Pre and his group are found out on Concordia. And he pulls me out to best an opponent yet again. Bot lo! This opponent is a Jedi! I recognize him. He is one of the two I sensed with the duchess years back. And Pre has no chance against him. And though he manages to escape with me, I learned something valuable today. That Pre might be good enough with a blade to best another Mandalorian, but not good enough to best a Jedi.

###

Some people learn from their mistakes. Pre Vizsla is not one of those people. After being betrayed by Dooku, you’d think he’d stay away from Sith. But no. Now he is allying himself with a Sith named Maul. The other one – Savage? – is something I haven’t figured out yet. He is a tortured soul. But differently than any Sith I have ever encountered before. Not like he started out good and then fell. No, like he was pushed over to the dark side without predisposition. I cannot make heads or tails of him.

It is night now. Pre has put me carelessly next to his blasters on the table in his tent. He is asleep, but the woman is not. Bo-Katan, I know by now. She is restless. Worried. I sense something in her that I have never sensed from her before: doubt. She wants Maul gone. But there is something else. There is talk now of ending the duchess’s life. Something I sense Bo-Katan does not wish for. She might not agree with her sister, she might not even like her, but she does not want her death.

Whatever is coming, I feel everyone will be on the losing side of this.

###

Pre Vizsla is dead. And my casing now belongs to a Sith. _Meg te haran?_ What have I done to deserve this?

###

Maybe it is the fear, the anger, and the hatred all around me, but for the first time I understand how people can be consumed by it. This is all too much! The Sith feels cold in the Force, and his cold is seeping into my core like poison. I know his intent. To make the Jedi suffer. And to do so, to kill the duchess. And he does. I want to burst again, but still the Force does not allow it.

What have I done? Tell me! What have I done to deserve this? Is this my punishment for being ripped of a shelf? For being different? Unusual? Unique? What?

There is no answer, of course. Or maybe there is. A lesson that I once learned together with Tarre at the Temple. That in the darkest hour, a light may shine the brightest. And it is there, right before me. On the dying breath of a woman my blade has delivered to death’s doorstep. _Love._ Pure, untainted, and unconditional. So maybe, just maybe, my journey will not end on such a dreadful note.

###

Or maybe it will. Darth Sidious has come to Mandalore to end Maul and his brother. Savage dies; but he is not afraid. In the Force, I can sense his relief, I can sense his former self, before the Magick of the Nightsisters turned him into something else.

Maul is imprisoned, but his followers rescue him and return me to him. Great.

###

Aaaand, I’m on a shelf. Again. On Dathomir. And boy this planet is creepy.

###

So, a blind Jedi, a Padawan, a Mandalorian, a Twi’lek, a Lasat and an ill-tempered droid walk into a bar. You think this is a joke? No. This is my life now.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful that I am no longer on Dathomir. But this place? There is a Force wielder here in this planet of a kind I have never encountered before. I can sense him, but I never meet him. Too bad, really. I am curious, after all.

And the people? They are different than I expected. When I think of Jedi, I think of serenity. Not of what I encounter here. Here, it is love, friendship and attachment. Bright and messy and oh so much more wonderful and wonderous than I have experienced in a long time.

Pre Vizsla liked to tell my story in a certain way; a way I always cringed at. Not necessarily wrong, but not the truth either. Now another Mandalorian tell my story to the blind Jedi, a tat different, but a whole lot more truthful. And he has a plan; a plan for the young Mandalorian woman – Sabine – to take me up and unite Mandalore to free her people from the Empire – and hence from Sith rule.

Usually, I’d say I am tired of fighting. But maybe this is the one last fight I have to go through. The reason I was never allowed to pass into the Force myself.

###

Sabine Wren trains with the two Jedi. She tries, and I feel she could be better, if she wouldn’t hold herself back. There is something inside her; a secret, a _dark_ secret, she cannot talk about.

###

I should now better than to count a Mandalorian out of a fight by now. Sabine Wren confronts her past – and maybe, just maybe, there is a bright future ahead.

###

Honestly…Mandalorians…I can’t even…Gar Saxon…urgh…Someone toss me into this frozen like please…

And then, suddenly, a shift in the Force. It is suddenly full of regret, of anger, of fear…and of love. A mother’s love for her daughter. Gar Saxon dies, and Ursa Wren is free of something she didn’t even know held her captive.

###

We’re back on Mandalore proper to free Sabine’s father. But something is strange; not off, but strange. Almost like the day I was found. Different, and yet the Force around me tingles with the same kind of excitement. What is this day going to bring, I wonder?

###

There, shortly before I think all is over, is a presence I haven’t felt in many years. I recognize her, and yet I instantly know that the Bo-Katan Kryze that was Pre Vizsla’s right hand is not the same person that is now here to save us from certain defeat.

Something about her has calmed; there is an inner peace I have never felt from her before. She is not her sister, but she is no longer the tormented soul I met on Concordia all those years ago.

Sabine offers me to her, but she refuses.

But later, after the weapon is destroyed, and Mandalore just a tat closer to freedom, she does not.

She may be no Jedi; she may not even have the Force. But the Force still thinks that this is right, that this is as it should be. At first, I am not convinced. I am back in the hands of another _Mand’alor_ , another warrior who will try to unite her people and will wage war with me in her hand. But it feels different. There is no lust for power. But there is courage, and honor, and a familiar sense of duty.

Bo-Katan Kryze ignites the blade, the rising sun over Mandalore shining down on us. The beginning of a new day wrapped in a feeling this galaxy might need the most. Hope.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Mando'a translations**  
>  _Meg te haran?_ \- What the hell?  
>  _Mand'alor_ \- sole ruler of Mandalore
> 
> As you see, I chose to stop with Bo-Katan becoming Mand'alor. Though we do know that the Darksabre will find its way into the hands of Moff Gideon, I wanted to stop on a high note :-)


End file.
